This month's way to wellbeing spotlight is on Be Healthy

Each week in May the focus is on a different element of Being Healthy and we'll be producing material to support and promote this. Please visit the other items in this menu for more details.

Don't forget, if you want to plan your own activity and need inspiration, examples of previous events can be found here. As face to face activities aren't possible during the current situation, we'd love to hear from you with alternative suggestions. Please send these to studentsupport@manchester.ac.uk.

Resources

You can find ready-made resources here or, if you want to create your own, visit the University's brandsite for the assets you'll need (you'll need to scroll down a little to get to them!).

If creating your own, you’ll need to buy InDesign (in Adobe Creative Cloud) from the University's Electronic Software Delivery system.

You should also ask IT to install the University fonts, they can do this simply for you here.

Social media

Don't forget to follow us on instagram: @uomwellbeing.

Every Wednesday the Wellbeing Team will be promoting positive wellbeing to encourage students to take care of themselves during these uncertain times. 

We'll be handpicking different events and activites students can take part in throughout the day at home - from mindfulness sessions to live gigs.

This will be promoted through our instagram page @uomwellbeing and on our student support website. You can find a clickable PDF schedule for the day here, this will be updated every Tuesday. Further assets for social media can be found below.

If you'd like to run your own activities to promote positive wellbeing and need some inspiration, take a look at this event ideas page. Due to the current situation, we know that face to face activities won't be possible so if you have any suggestions for alternative events, we'd love to hear from you: studentsupport@manchester.ac.uk

Remember to use the hashtag #uomwellbeingwednesdays in any social media posts!

Suggested copy for newsletters etc:

Looking for a wellbeing boost? Every Wednesday your Wellbeing Team will be running ‘Wellbeing Wednesdays!'. These Wednesdays will include wellbeing events and activities that you can take part in from home throughout the day - from mindfulness sessions to live gigs. Follow @uomwellbeing to get involved!

Assets:

(Right-click to save images- social media and instagram story assets will be updated every Tuesday)

Change and uncertainty can make us feel anxious, fearful, frustrated and even angry - these are normal and natural responses to have. Evidence suggests that accepting change and uncertainty, and our emotional responses to these, is one of the most effective ways of supporting our wellbeing. Take a look at our change and uncertainty video (coming soon) for an evidence based technique to help you practice acceptance. 

Change and uncertainty can also directly impact various aspects of life, including routine, mindset, home environment, eating habits and sleep pattern. We’ve collated our previous resources, and created a few new things, to help support these areas on our student support website.

Changes and challenges are a normal part of life, and resilience is the capacity in which we adapt to changes and recover from challenges. We may even find ourselves growing from these experiences and improving our lives as result.

Resilience isn’t an extraordinary trait that only some people have. It involves thoughts and actions that can be learnt and developed in us all. While we may all have a different starting point in how resilient we feel, there are a range of tools that you can use to build and develop resilience. Think of it like a gym session for your psychological immune system!

This year, students may find that they are facing new challenges and unexpected changes, so now more than ever it is important that we encourage resilience amongst students. We have created this page  that includes evidence-based information and resources that students can use to develop their resilience. 

We have also created a resilience journal  that you can share with students, so that they can work through the four elements of resilience either for a particular situation or more generally to build resilience. 

We have also created this video on resilience to support the page and resource that you can share with students. 

During difficult and uncertain times, it can be challenging to maintain our financial wellbeing when unexpected costs or reductions to our income occur. The current situation has brought with it financial concerns for many people, and worries around money can be very straining and unsettling.

Conversations around money can sometimes be awkward and uncomfortable, but if financial concerns become overwhelming, it is always a good idea to speak to someone else and seek support.

We are aware of some of the financial difficulties that students have been facing during this time, so we have created this page that provides information and resources for some of these specific challenges.

We have also created a budget planner to help students manage their finances.

We would also like to encourage students who are facing financial hardship, particularly those from more vulnerable groups, to apply for the Living Cost Support Fund. We have created social media assets that provide information on the LCSF, and we would be grateful if you could share these across your channels.

We have also created this video on financial wellbeing to support the page and resources that you can share with students. 

It’s normal to feel a degree of anxiety about our health and that of our loved ones during the current situation, however there are things we can do to regain a sense of control in terms of our own actions that can help us and others. 

Protective health behaviours are the things we do to proactively keep ourselves healthy. They include behaviours that look after our physical health (e.g. exercise) and behaviours that look after our mental health (e.g. social connections). Finding a balance of activities can help to support our wellbeing - students can take a look at our healthy wellbeing balance Venn diagram to identify a balance that works for them (social media version available here).

We can sometimes experience a gap between the behaviours we intend to do and those we actually complete. To help reduce this intention-behaviour gap we can plan actions into our daily routines to support us in completing them - we’ve developed an implementation intentions table to help students with this.

For more resources to support student wellbeing, visit our be healthy page. 

Due to the current situation, we've asked the student Wellbeing Champions for feedback and suggestions of activities they'd like to run. We'll add content here as soon as we know more.